


Descent

by Frangipanidownunder



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-12-01 00:39:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11474970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frangipanidownunder/pseuds/Frangipanidownunder
Summary: Written for this prompt: Mulder hears weird sounds coming from Scully’s room, but when he goes to check up on her, the room’s empty.





	Descent

The hot pulse of blood in his ears is leaking fear into his mind, pressure building so he can’t think straight. He’s been in this position so many times. Looking for people, searching for the truth, the answers, lost time, credibility. Losing people. He’s always losing. Tendons in his fists scream as he bunches his fingers, folding them away. No more sacrifices. He doesn’t want to do this anymore.  
“Scully?”  
He’s standing there, in the door frame between their rooms. In this space, it’s a descent into the netherworld. Like Ishtar, stripped bare to appease the furious queen, Mulder is stripped to the bone by fear. He is held still at this threshold because if he passes through then he risks knowing. And he of all people understands that knowing is the worst.  
In his life, too many times, he’s heard the mantra of the loved ones of those missing: It’s the not knowing that’s so hard.  
Truth is, it’s the hope that keeps you going. Even in the murkiest depths of the night, when the voices are telling you that it’s just not worth holding on anymore, that it’s time to let go, you know that it’s the not knowing that keeps the blood pumping. But if he loses her again, would he even let hope lead him forward? He isn’t sure.  
“Scully?”  
From his vantage point, he sees half her room reflected in the dressing table mirror. Across the end of her bed, her jacket lays in a crumpled heap. Her weapon is nested in the folds, its point peeking out, a gaping mouth. Her necklace is spread across the desk, the cross hanging over the edge, bright against the dark of the desk.  
He is suspended in time by his own indecision. The inertia of past against future fixes him. His father would have yelled at him for being weak. His mother would offer him a lost smile and tell him he had to make the decision. Samantha would have held his hand and passed the gate with him. Scully would offer herself as a sacrifice to the queen in his place. She would be Dumuzi, Ishtar’s husband, martyred to spend eternity in the netherworld so that he could live.  
He thinks, stupidly, as he steps through, that Scully is his goddess of love and war. She is his Venus. It is stupid, but it is his truth in that moment.  
He hears the noise again. Louder, a strangled gasping, a choking gulp. A person struggling for air. A series of dull thuds. He is across the room to the bathroom door in microseconds. The weight of his gun in his hand is a comfort and a curse. He kicks the door, aims his weapon, drops to his knees and decides the clattering of a gun against a tiled floor is a disturbingly loud noise when your partner is lying naked, foetal against the side of the bathtub.  
Strands of hair are pasted to her face. The smell of vomit is fierce. He rinses a washcloth under the hot tap and wipes her face. Her eyes open but do not focus. She is breathing, though. She is alive and she is breathing and she is in his arms.  
“Scully? Can I move you? I don’t know what to do. Are you injured? Can you hear me?”  
His words jam together in between his frightened gulps of breath. Lashes on one eye flicker open and shut and she tries to press her lips together. He wipes her face again and she frowns.  
“Where are we, Mulder?”  
He shudders. “Bellefleur, Scully. We’re in Bellefleur. And I’m taking you home.”


End file.
